


next spring and her jubilant shout

by betony



Category: Spinning Silver - Naomi Novik
Genre: F/M, POV First Person, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-26 14:43:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17143679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betony/pseuds/betony
Summary: Mirnatius, after.





	next spring and her jubilant shout

**Author's Note:**

  * For [morganstern](https://archiveofourown.org/users/morganstern/gifts).



Freedom terrified me.  
****

Imagine having great metal bands placed about your chest as a child, so tightly that you could never draw in a proper breath, and then, without warning, finding them broken so that your heart spilled out from between your ribs. That was the gift darling Irina had given me, and I was still not sure what to do with it. 

I could do as I pleased without fearing that my friend would review my memories come nighttime. I could draw any face that caught my attention without wondering if that would mean their doom. I could damn the throne and all those who wanted its power, and leave it all behind. 

I’m not certain why I didn’t, in those first few days, were it not for my conviction that my beloved queen would murder me with her own dainty hands if I left her without a right to rule. She already took me to task about abandoning my responsibilities—that was how she put it, “abandoning my responsibilities,” as though I’d ever asked to take them on to begin with. Besides it was plain for all to see she was better at them than I had ever been. She smiled at the dotards of the council, old and young, and batted her eyes so that they didn’t notice her running circles around them to have her own way. 

She hadn’t believed me when I told her my court was full of fools. At least _I_ could appreciate her wit as well as her beauty. 

Irina did not need me for much these days. Having presented her as tsarina, and having sat beside her during an afternoon council or two to nod at her decisions, my advisors were perfectly happy to welcome her in my stead, leaving me free to prowl the gardens and see about planting something more pleasing to the eyes than hardy weeds. The winter’s end meant they might even grow. The gardeners exclaimed at my ideas, where the dotards would dismiss them as extravagance, and hovered around as I squatted on a bench and sketched out my initial plans to general acclaim. 

Irina railed at me for my disappearance that night as I undressed, and I ignored her dulcet tones as ever. My long-suffering patience meant nothing to her, even after her watchdog of a crone disappeared for the night and we climbed into bed. 

“Enough,” I grumbled at last. “It’s not as though they wouldn’t rather watch you instead.”

Irina scowled at me, her face not glass but the molten sand that brought it into creation, and it struck me suddenly that I was one of the few who knew her so, free of the enchantment of her crown. Something reared up in me at that, so greedy that I recoiled from the very thought of it. I had not been delivered from one demon to find myself at the mercy of another.

My dear tsarina interpreted my expression as originating from her complaints, and turned her back to me, producing a passable imitation of an unqueenly snore. I ignored her just as easily, but in the middle of the night, I felt her startle awake and go still. I had learned, over many nights, not to reach for her when this happened; it only frightened her all the more.

Instead: “It’s all right,” I said gruffly, “he’s gone. It’s only me.”

Irina’s breathing steadied, and beneath the covers, her hand searched for mine, clutching it so tightly I wondered that my knuckles didn’t turn white with pain. I didn’t mind though: there was a freedom in this, the ability to comfort another instead of curling up and wanting comfort yourself. I did not have to hoard my peace with in as I did my pleasure, and that meant I could be generous with it. I appreciated the reminder.

She never spoke of this by morning light these days; only ever had once, when she’d stared up at me and snapped, “Don’t pretend me _you_ never wake up and forget all that’s changed.” 

Sweet oblivious Irina. As though I could. Every moment, conscious or not, that fire and pain did not lick at my belly, that my thoughts and feelings were my own, that I woke to find her still asleep in my arms—then I knew what had happened, and all that she had done for me.

* * *

 In time Irina gave up hope of having me offer any opinion and instead resorted to buffeting me with questions at the least opportune times. “The army,” she demanded as I tried to pick out a cloak that didn’t make my eyes want to bleed. “Your thoughts?”

I sneered back at her in the mirror. “It could do with more Tatars,” I grumbled, “and _soon_.”

Irina’s reflection might flush, but it never relented. I sighed, and racked my brains for any opinion on the subject, save that the military, and its remote outposts, made for a convenient destination to send inconvenient cousins and courtiers, “Desperately in need,” I said at last, “of new uniforms. Smarter ones.”

“I’m being serious.”

“So am I!” And here I thought she’d wanted to be graced with my viewpoint. “A man can’t be sent to die in shabby clothes. It adds insult to any other injury.”

I knew that all too well. Irina had eyed my brocades and silks with misgiving when we’d prepared to go and ensnare the Staryk, but I had known, even then, that if I must end that night a corpse, it would be as a beautiful one. 

I waited for Irina to jeer, but she frowned. “To send rations—supplies—uniforms designed by the Tsar’s own hand would remind them that they are not forgotten. It improve morale and prevent mutiny.”

Outright thanking me would be too great an injury to her precious dignity, but Irina nodded slightly in my general direction. I swallowed, old habits leading me to smother the slightest hint of pride; my friend might be gone, but I still mistrusted any hope that I might offer the throne anything but a pretty face to place on official portraits. Mesmerization only went so far, as my delightful tsarina had reminded me soon after our marriage. 

Though perhaps that was not all I was meant to offer.

I frowned and turned to face Irina; I was a coward and knew it, but I would not spend this conversation cringing away from her shouts at my back, no matter how much I wanted to. “You’ll need an heir,” I said baldly. 

“ _We_ ’ll need an heir,” Irina corrected sharply, which was the last thing I wanted to hear at the moment. What use was it trying to be noble for once, when your wife was determined to outdo you? I’d offered her the use of any Tatar guard of her liking, more than once. I’d allowed her the escape no one had given me. What more could she possibly want of me?

I said as much, thinking she’d realize all the liberties she was given. When she found words at last, she wasn’t impressed, however; not in the slightest. Her voice shook; her fists clenched; and were she not Irina the Imperturbable, I swear she would have stamped her feet in rage. 

“You might turn your back on your duty,” she told me, so self-righteous that I half-expected a halo to form about her dark head, “but I cannot. I won’t commit a sin, not for your sake.”

It seemed to me that Irina had committed her fair share of sins in Lithvas’ name already and thought nothing of it, but what rankled more was her invocation of _duty_. What a way to make a man even more leery of the marriage bed, I thought, forgetting entirely that I’d meant to offer it myself not minutes before.

“Duty,” I repeated scornfully. “And does anything hold meaning for you save duty, my beloved?”

“Does anything hold meaning for you at all?” retorted Irina, and swept out the door, having gotten the last word in as ever. 

* * *

 There had been a time, when I was a boy, that the demon that shared my skin did not keep such close watch over me. Its interest had been in securing me the throne, in using my body to work the magic and whisper the spells that would kill my own flesh and blood; and it had not cared, then, who I smiled at and spoke to. 

In particular, it had tired after the coronation; resting, I expect, on its laurels. If I were careful to avoid extremes of emotion, I might even believe myself free. That was why I used the time to hold the only memorial to Karolis I dared. He always had despaired of my ability to shoot anything, even the most sluggish of squirrels, and once I had, I found I was angry at them: for their inconsequential existence, for their easy deaths, for the way I might stroke life out of them even afterwards. It was no magic that I knew, not really, but still I wondered if I might have been able to do the same to Karolis, if only I’d been there. My thoughts swirled back steadily towards grief, so that Chernobog began to rouse, when I saw the girl gaping at me. 

That was how I met her, the valiant defender of dead squirrels. One would think she would tire of busying herself once they were cold and lifeless, but no. Rude of her, and foolish, and irritating enough that Chernobog saw nothing to suit its appetite but my customary peevishness. It receded once again. 

Saving me, even then. I wanted to meet her again, even then, if only to tell her the thousand clever taunts at her goodness I might produce, and left the squirrels behind to provide myself the excuse. Fortunately the crone had the foresight to save Irina—save both of us—from me; the year after Irina was bustled away to her father’s lands, I woke to find the first body in my bed. 

Three years later, I knew better, enough to regard her even in the privacy of my mind with nothing but disdain; but then, just this last winter, I had grown reckless. 

I had no reason, really, to go to Vysnia;Erdivilas might have been momentarily dismayed at a polite refusal of the invitation he dutifully sent—that word again; bah!—but then would know nothing but relief at being spared the expense of a royal visit. It was I who accepted; I who took the chance; I who gambled that no harm would come of indulging my curiosity as to what had become of his daughter. 

I had gone to Vysnia, knowing better, allowed Chernobog to be seduced by Staryk silver, and — much as I tried to convince myself otherwise—everything that followed was on my head.

* * *

 I did not see Irina again until that night, in our bedroom. For a second I wondered why she was even there: certainly the general public had been sufficiently convinced of the deep and abiding passion the tsar and his wife shared. Reassuring each other of a demon’s death is hardly a marital necessity. 

But she got ready for bed, as grim as ever, and then stood to face me squarely, back as soldier-straight as her father’s.

“Any child of mine,” she said, “will be legitimate. Lithvas can’t afford any rumors about the legitimacy of the heir, not if Casimir and Ulrich are to keep their silence.”

Duty, always duty, and I only a means to an end; what right had I to expect any different. I forced myself to bow deeply. “As my tsarina commands,” I said. “Assuming the populace doesn’t mind their next tsar being the grandchild of a witch.”

Irina smiled suddenly, contrary to my intent. “Is that better or worse,” she mused aloud, “than being descendant to a Staryk knight?”

I hadn’t even considered that. My god, the monsters we would make together. Any man of sense would refuse on principle. 

Instead I said, “And I take it my duty is to lay down and obligingly die once the heir and the spare are produced?” How else could my devoted tsarina make herself regent and secure her power beyond questions?

Irina stared at her feet, and then at me. She had never seem so unsure or unremarkable that I could recall, not since she’d taken up wearing that damned crown. Finally she said: “If you wish it, arrangements could be made. No one would think to find a tsar officially known to be deceased in place of a traveling student of fine art.”

I wanted to say _yes_ , more than I have done anything in all my life. But I thought of the monsters we might produce, thought of them growing up alone as I had. Irina would mean well but lack the time for them; and always they would wonder how their life might have changed if their father had only survived. 

What was more—I have never known what it was that my mother felt for my father, but if it was a fraction of what I felt for Irina, that same dizzying promise of a future where there had been nothing but wretchedness before, I pitied her for it, well and truly. If it was so, I might even find it in myself to forgive her some faraway day for what she’d done to me. 

I looked Irina in the eye, and I said: “And if I did not wish it? What, then, would my duty be?”

There were plenty of answers she might give: arrange the gardens, design a new military wardrobe, design _her_ wardrobe—for certainly she needed it. I wanted to know what she would say.

She wiped her hands on the skirt of her nightdress. “To love me,” she said in a voice like steel or silver, “to care for our children, to stand by my side so I needn’t be alone. I find,” she added, “that I haven’t the temperament for it. Not anymore.”

My mother had damned my soul in a bad bargain years before I was born. What difference did it make if I did the same to myself? I held myself still until she reached for me, her cool hand searching for my own, and only then did I trust myself to speak. 

“Agreed,” I told her. “Agreed.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Vienna Teng's "Drought." For morganstern, who had wonderful prompts; have a very happy Yuletide!


End file.
